Edit: I accidentally refreshed the page and it offered alternative questions for ID validation, such as high school of graduation and SSN. But it’s still absurd to expect someone to even humor the premise of the prompt.

  • @raspberriesareyummyEnglish
    9•1 day ago

    While the wording is stupid, and “astrological” indeed refers to the superstitious bullshit, the zodiacs are not a believer/non-believer thing, but based on an astronomical(!) constellation being at a particular position in the sky in the period of said zodiac. That said, however, and without checking, I am sure that this does not align with the dates assigned to the zodiacs at all anymore because the Earth wobbles on it’s orbit & also because the zodiac cycles could never possibly align precisely with a year on Earth, simply because the dates are fixed and don’t account for leap years (the ~0.25 day extra each year).

    Why did I make this point? Because it appears that in Europe at least, everyone knows their zodiac - I would be surprised if it’s any different in countries that use the same calendar.

    • KubeRootEnglish
      2•1 day ago

      I don’t think zodiac cycles need to account for leap years, since it’s the leap years that account for things to make dates align. If by wobble you mean something like the tilt of the axis of rotation changing, then yeah, that’d mess things up - otherwise, I think the constellations are basically just based on where the sun is, and this which direction your part of the earth is facing during the night. If I’m correct, then I suspect the zodiacs do still align, but the constellations will differ depending on your latitude…

      • @raspberriesareyummyEnglish
        3•1 day ago

        By saying wobble, I was referring to:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession

        For identical reasons, the apparent position of the Sun relative to the backdrop of the stars at some seasonally fixed time slowly regresses a full 360° through all twelve traditional constellations of the zodiac, at the rate of about 50.3 seconds of arc per year, or 1 degree every 71.6 years.

        Re leap years: On second thought you might be correct about that one.